


When you have nothing to say, set something on fire

by crookedspoon



Series: Grant me freedom from objects [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Dirty Talk, Hand Jobs, I Was Drunk When I Wrote This, Insomnia, M/M, Morning After, POV Joseph Kavinsky, POV Second Person, Rain Sex, Rehabilitation, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 08:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12250587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/pseuds/crookedspoon
Summary: More musings on sleep and rehab than anyone asked for, and a hand job in the rain.Companion piece to "not really soothing but soothing nonetheless."





	When you have nothing to say, set something on fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galateaofthewestside](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galateaofthewestside/gifts).



> For #2 "Barefoot" from Inktober for writers and #2 "Dirty talk" from Kinktober 2017, although you have to slog through over 1k of unsexiness first to get to that.
> 
> In which I once again ramble my way through the beginning and rush the ending.

Sleep has never been your friend. For as long as you can remember, you've been at war with each other, every night another casualty between you. It took artificial means to put your consciousness to bed, but that rarely resulted in anything akin to rest.

Now, by virtue of temporal and emotional distance, you can see how you've been skinning yourself raw, running on empty but fooling your broken gauge into thinking the tank's still full.

At least you didn't need sleep then, even if the lack of it had been slicing you down to the marrow.

These days, it's both easier and harder to call a truce with it. You're still not quite on speaking terms with tiredness, but you're getting to know exhaustion more and more, your body willingly succumbing to it, hoping that when you resurface, the shit you deal with won't feel so heavy anymore. But you're also more aware of your physical presence in the world and while you couldn't care less about other people's opinions, there's always something your brain is dissecting at night, now that you can no longer coast by on a sustained cocaine high.

During rehab, they used to pump you full of sleeping pills and you thought cool, you're used to that – but you weren't used to their brand of pharmaceuticals and you weren't allowed to monitor the dosage yourself, so that sucked. Pan to you in deep slumber until the nurse on duty called you to breakfast, or you swaying in your seat, groggy and discontent for the rest of the dull drudgery of the day that gave you nothing but frustration and more boredom than you'd ever felt before in your life until finally you were waking up once that afternoon slump was behind you, but that only gave you about an hour of clarity before the clock said you had to get souped up again if you wanted to sleep that night. (Not that anyone ever asked you if you did.)

In any case: not enough time to combat brain rot in any meaningful way.

You're free of nurses now, thank fuck, but Lynch sometimes acts like one, trying not to be obvious about it, which means broody silences, insults, and challenging stares. So nothing out of the ordinary, because those are his usual MO, but you've learned to read their qualitative differences.

Still, even without hospital staff, you're not exactly more prone to sleep through the night. Sounds wake you all the time, whether they come from inside your head or outside of it, but it's better than the alternative. Cold sweat clings to your skin in the shadow of a nightmare you don't remember and maybe never even fell into, but the memory, or the anticipation of it is enough to speed up your pulse.

The wake-up sound of the day is raindrops on a tin roof. At least, the roof of this dump might as well be tin given how it amplifies the hollow drumming of the rain. Lynch, the bastard, is fast asleep beside you and decimating the entire rain forest in his dreams. You pinch his nose until he shuts it.

He turns around and begins anew.

Yeah, so much for rest tonight—this morning? It's getting light out behind the tacky curtains, so you missed your magic four o'clock.

Once they got you off the sleeping meds, you'd wake up every day at 4am sharp, the faintly glowing face of your roommates' clock radio burning themselves into your retinas. Unless you were still tossing about and crawling up the walls at 4am. But fact remains that you've become intimately acquainted with that time of day and its eerie quiet. 

Back when you were king of the streets, you'd never noticed how fucking dead this hour was, because you'd still be partying or visiting Wendy's or Dairy Queen or whatever the fuck big-ass fast food chain that doesn't know the concept of 'closed,' because one of your crew had the munchies and was being a bitch about it. Or something. You always found shit to do.

But in there, locked up with a bunch of other insomniac losers like you, finding ways to engage your brain was a goddamn luxury. You could sneak out of your room for a smoke and hope to meet another lost soul if you were feeling social enough, or zap through the channels on your TV-station, or even flirt with whatever nurse was on duty that night if they were pretty enough. Most of the time they weren't, but you couldn't afford to be choosy in your situation and it never hurt to practice.

Anything at all not to be alone in your head with those intrusive thoughts that were caving in your skull and carving messages into your brainpan that said you could get rid of this all if only you had a handful of pills or a zip bag of white powder or better yet, when you were really desperate: a gun. You could end it all so easily.

A knife works as well, as you've learned. 

Your body screams with the fire of sliced up skin when you move to get up. The wounds feel dry and papery on your chest, as if a thin layer of newspaper had been pasted onto it, kind of like the collages they'd had you do in art therapy.

The gauze Lynch wrapped you up in so you wouldn't stain the fresh sheets sticks to you in places. It curls onto the bathroom floor like discarded snake skin once you unroll it. It also reminds you of the times you'd bind your chest with compression bandages until you literally couldn't breathe anymore from the pain of it.

You eye your chest from all sides in the mirror, taking stock of the damage Lynch has dealt you, but also taking comfort in how flat it is. Since your surgery you've seized every opportunity to run around topless, and today is no exception, even if the drafts in this place are raising goosebumps on your flesh.

You leave the wrappings on the floor and flick off the light.

In the gloom, this dump of a house feels even more cluttered and claustrophobic, and you itch for a breath of fresh air. You prefer to dream in more wide-open spaces. Still, you gotta hand it to Lynch senior, he knew how to populate his world with dreams. You're sure the two of you would have gotten along, from all Lynch is not telling you about him.

(You don't wonder what would have become of you if your own father had been more tolerant of what you can do. He's yesterday's news and so is any thought pertaining to him.)

A pair of over-sized rubber boots keep watch by the back door, one of them lying on its side, both their soles coated with muck and mud and other shit. Rain is streaking the windows.

The rush of noise that grows louder when you unlatch the door is like static in your ears, and a cool puff of wind ghosts over your skin like a caress. You light a cigarette and toss your zippo onto the inside window sill before you step outside. No point in carrying it around with you.

Water gushes down the eaves in thick streams and it splashes your legs when it hits the ground. You're feeling strangely peaceful as the world is roaring around you. 

After another moment of simply drinking in your surroundings, you pick your way onto the field, bare soles tickled by the wet grass, feet sinking into the earth. What's left of your cigarette gets spotty and hisses before it goes out completely. Rain is quickly dripping off the ends of your hair and soaking into your boxer shorts. Not an inch of your skin remains dry.

The cold is numbing the fire of your numerous cuts, soothing it even, like nature's own ready-made salve.

There's freedom in this, all of it, standing in the middle of a grassy landscape, nothing but the clouds above you, and space to stretch out wherever you look.

You stay like this, face upturned slightly and fingertips curling into the rain.

Your moment of solitude doesn't last long. Not that you'd have needed it to. You so hate to be alone.

"You'll catch your death, dumbass." 

You turn to see Lynch leaning out of the back door, scratching his calf with the toes of his other foot. 

"Who says that's not what a want?" you call back over the noise.

"I won't be tending your whiny ass if you get sick."

"Good. Maybe then I'll die of pneumonia."

Lynch considers the rubber boots by the door before he decides to forgo them entirely. You watch the grass bend beneath him as he follows in your footsteps. He walks right up into your face, but not in a threatening way. More like imploring.

No, that's not it either. His hand is reaching toward you, hovering inches from your skin, as if waiting for permission to touch. You grant it by touching him first. Your fingers skid over his wet arm onto his tanktop that is now waterlogged and heavy.

He hesitates a moment longer, then his hand settles on your waist, solid and warm on your clammy skin, and he finds an undamaged patch to stroke his thumb along.

You hate it when he treats you like glass, just because you break sometimes.

You yank him closer by his drenched top and shove a hand past his waistband. Raindrops slide down your naked back.

"Hey," he breathes as he curves to lean his forehead against yours. His fingers are on your wrist, but they don't shove you away. "Someone's eager."

"Yesterday got me in the mood again."

"You sure this isn't one of your get-out-of-talks-free tactics?"

"What would we wanna talk about?" The feel of his length responding to your touch sends a shiver of heat up your spine that is warring with the cold seeping into your muscles.

"Last night," he says and his breath makes the skin of your face prickle.

"Already told you—"

"How it was for you." He grips your shoulders, as much to hold you at a distance as to hold himself upright. His hands are slippery. It's a bit like having sex in the shower, only not so cozy, convenient and warm.

"Good." You rake your blunt nails over his trap muscle, his neck, his scalp, and delight in the involuntary shudder he can't suppress. Pulling his head down to your shoulder, you murmur into his ear, "I wanna fuck you."

He shakes his head against you, shoulders shaking with a snort, but it's disbelief, not dislike.

"Wanna make you choke on my dick."

That one earns you a twitch. He's definitely getting interested down there, despite the wind blowing cold air around his wet skin.

"Wanna pound your ass raw, right here, with your face pressed into the grass."

His exhale is wet, his inhale needy.

"Would you like that?"

He huffs, and it sounds like embarrassment.

"Do you wanna be on your knees for me again?"

"Yeah."

You groan. The image of this tall, strong boy looking up at you with that quiet devotion of his is almost too much for you.

He releases your arms to wind his around your back, the embrace made so much closer in the gray light and the rain, no matter the open air.

The embrace painfully reminds you of the patchwork of gashes you are, and how much it hurts.

You talk your way through it. 

"That's the right place for you, kneeling in front of me, with your head buried in my crotch."

His mouth presses against your neck, sucks in the droplets that slide down from your ears, and he holds you tighter as his hips work against you. You love the feel of him, smooth and hot and hard, something you've been trying to replicate during long hours of dream experiments, but so far haven't been successful with.

"I'd rub myself all over your face and have you lick me clean."

Heat is beginning to throb in your nether regions, because fuck, you remember how good his tongue feels inside you or how it makes you jump when his nose brushes against you there.

"You can't wait for that to happen, right?"

He bucks into your tightly curling fingers, panting into your soaked hair. His release is answer enough for now. You stroke him through the aftershocks with one hand and scratch his head with the other. That's about as much as you can multitask right now. The rest of your body is trembling as much as he is.

The downpour is slowly letting up.

"Wanna do that again in the shower?" you ask, somewhat hopeful, because warm water sounds like an amazing idea right now. As do his hands on you.

With a big inhale, he straightens himself, still somewhat heavy-going, and says, "You can have a shower after you help me."

"With what?" Is he aware you're not actually wearing anything aside from the shorts that now feel like swimming trunks?

"Grab a pail and find out." He kisses you deeply, warmth pooling out of his skin into yours. Then he moves towards one of the bigger sheds, a little unsteadily but still as though you hadn't just given him a handjob in the middle of the fields.

"The fuck?" you call after him. You'd been looking forward to curling up in front of a hearth fire or something. Not this. "What is this, farm therapy?"

Way to ruin the mood. Like hell you're going to muck around in cow dung with him. But you trudge after him anyway, because it comes to you that these cows don't shit. So whatever he has in mind probably involves dreaming. At least that's more to your liking.

You guess that curiosity, not the cold, will be the death of you one day.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede" by Richard Siken.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Tumblr link for reblogging convenience [here](https://crookedspoonfic.tumblr.com/post/165984491980/when-you-have-nothing-to-say-set-something-on). Come say hi, I could use a few more fandom friends <3


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